


can you feel the panic inside?

by Patcho418



Category: RWBY
Genre: Almost smut, Canon-compliant (mostly), F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Vacuo (RWBY), in which Coco is scared of falling in love, no I'm not ashamed of that, post-After the Fall, yes I made them wear my original designs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:28:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23536051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Patcho418/pseuds/Patcho418
Summary: Coco’s able to stifle a moan behind a shaky breath, wondering just how Velvet is able to be so unfairlyhotwithout even needing to try, and it hardly occurs to her in that moment how much she’s letting her guard down, letting the air spill from her lungs and letting the heat travel under her skin, through her chest and up her neck until pooling into her cheeks. She’s never been one to get so easily flustered, but she’s not going to pass up the feeling when she’s getting to look at Velvet.She lifts her arm and lets it fall over her eyes, her eyes holding back tears from the expensive fabric of her shirt, holding them back from the revelation she’s too proud to consider. “Dammit, Velvet, what are you doing to me?” she grumbles into her sleeve.Written as a bday gift for the lovely and extremely talentedlightsaroundyourvanity, thank you for repping Crosshares in these trying times.
Relationships: Coco Adel/Velvet Scarlatina
Comments: 20
Kudos: 146





	can you feel the panic inside?

Sometimes, Coco can’t help but stare.

It’s a little undignified, she knows, but that doesn’t stop her from getting caught in moments of watching every small thing she does: little smiles and smirks after a fight that pull Coco’s own lips into a smile, the way she smiles, big and cheerful and hiding an anxiety that’s been there as long as she’s known her—and Coco’s known her for a long time. No, not just known she’s ‘existed’ as Velvet often jokes, but known _Velvet_ , known what makes her tick, knows what worries crawl through her mind in her darker moments.

Maybe Coco feels just a little bit safer catching these brief glimpses of her from behind her shades, and yet it’s so unfamiliar to her. A feeling, deep in the pit of her stomach, one that she can’t ignore when those glances towards Velvet are met with a look of her own and followed up on by a bashful smirk or a brush of her hair behind her ear.

Maybe it’s love? Maybe, but Coco’s never been in love, of course, and she’s not expecting to be anytime soon. After all, she has a reputation to maintain, and she can’t be in love, not when she’s ‘Coco the Heartbreaker’ or ‘Coco the Ladykiller’ or ‘Coco who leaves hickeys and lipstick marks on the necks of the swooning girls she takes to bed for a night’.

So maybe, she reckons, it’s nervousness? She’s no stranger to that feeling, even though she’s _very_ adept at hiding it. In dark crevices where she has no room to move and the air itself constricts her lungs, that’s when she feels it. Brief moments in battle where she makes a mistake and her confidence falters and lives are on the line, that’s when she feels it. When she doesn’t feel it is when cute girls look her way and shoot her their own nervous glances as if she’s been caught looking—that’s usually what she likes most, so it really can’t be that.

And so maybe it’s more than that? Maybe it’s part of a bigger feeling, one that creeps warm under her skin and flush in her cheeks, one that dries the wetness in her mouth and sends her heart racing, craving, wanting, _needing_. But she’s not the one who needs, not the one pining after girls she can’t have because there’s never been a girl she couldn’t have, never been a girl that didn’t want her.

 _It’s all three_ , she muses for a moment, and thinks that that’s only ridiculous and nothing else.

And yet it’s there, every day, drawing her eye to Velvet like a magnet. She’s always known Velvet was cute, but she never noticed until recently just how _hot_ she was, not until she saw rippling abs open and on-display in Velvet’s admittedly much more confident gym clothes. The focused determination burning in her eyes whenever they train, whenever they fight, it’s endlessly alluring and an image Coco keeps in her mind with care and interest.

They’d finished working out together just about thirty minutes ago, and Coco had been almost completely unable to keep herself from flirting with Velvet about ‘taking showers’ and ‘thirsty work’, and the confidence with which Velvet played along, coy but certain, had completely taken her by surprise and had certainly not helped that ache pressing through her body, with heat pooling in her gut and spreading downward. She draws her leg up her bed, slowly crossing it over the other, and the pressure’s enough to give her at least some momentary respite from all of these overwhelming, swirling feelings.

Coco’s able to stifle a moan behind a shaky breath, wondering just how Velvet is able to be so unfairly _hot_ without even needing to try, and it hardly occurs to her in that moment how much she’s letting her guard down, letting the air spill from her lungs and letting the heat travel under her skin, through her chest and up her neck until pooling into her cheeks. She’s never been one to get so easily flustered, but she’s not going to pass up the feeling when she’s getting to look at Velvet.

Her heart pangs at the feeling— _maybe it’s guilt?_ —and she lingers on the mental image for just a brief moment longer until the frustration comes back to bite at her heart and tear at her eyes with wet confusion and discomfort.

 _This can’t be happening to me_ , Coco tells herself, and it’s scary, tense, pulling over her chest. It could be so easy to not feel this way, to shift her feelings far below and focus on how Velvet might feel against her skin, against her lips, but it’s harder with her to distance feeling and sensation. And this, to Coco, _becomes_ sensation, the sensation she wants to sate even if she knows doing so might take her somewhere new and uncomfortable. Somewhere dark, with no discernible exit. Somewhere tight and consuming and alien to her, and it’s so much scarier than she’d say of any cavern or crevice.

She lifts her arm and lets it fall over her eyes, her eyes holding back tears from the expensive fabric of her shirt, holding them back from the revelation she’s too proud to consider. “Dammit, Velvet, what are you doing to me?” she grumbles into her sleeve.

A sharp knock at her door brings Coco out of her thoughts, though that feeling remains taut in her gut. The beating of her heart slows a bit in her chest as she quickly grabs her shades and slides them over her tired eyes, masking the dark circles underneath them and the red stains of frustrated tears she’s too proud to shed.

She opens the door, partly wondering who’s calling on her this late at night, and of course is more than just a little bit surprised to see Velvet standing on the other side. Coco takes in a small breath, one that she’d think barely audible if not for the small twitch of Velvet’s ears, and her eyes trail down Velvet’s body. She’s still a little wet from her shower, small droplets gathering in the bend where her shoulders meet her neck, and her hair glistens with a fresh shine. Her vest hangs undone at her sides, the tank top she usually wears underneath gone in favour of displaying her toned stomach moving with her heavy, anxious breaths. 

She’s about as bare as she can be walking around the halls of the academy, and Coco presses her lips together to push back the immediate need to say something witty, something flirty; this is different, new even, and maybe it’s a good thing that she put her sunglasses back on before answering the door. Caught somewhere between a confident smirk and an astonished gasp, Coco leans back and puts her hands on her hips. 

“Velv,” she says—or, rather, stutters—as she lets Velvet step closer into her room, step into the room between her and Coco that’s growing smaller and hotter by the second. “This is a new look for you. I think I’m into it.”

“I know why you’re staring at me all the time,” Velvet says almost abruptly, and Coco hears the crackle of lust in her voice, her mind lingering on the rasp of each word as she draws closer.

And yet, Coco can’t even find it in herself to respond. Not yet. Not when she’s not even sure what the reason is. Instead, she lets Velvet pull into her space, stopping right in front of Coco as she feels the faintest press of her chest against hers. Coco’s tongue slips across the inside of her mouth, feeling suddenly dry as heat rushes all around her body, to her cheek and to her neck and to that ache between her legs that wants her to push forward.

She’s done this a thousand times, she’s _Coco Adel_! She shouldn’t be getting cold feet because a girl’s getting up in her space, but here she is, shy and holding back a whimper with her heart racing in her chest, and maybe it’s that twinge of pride being pushed down by all of the other swirling feelings she’s been feeling for the past while.

Velvet looks at her from under her eyelashes, searching, and Coco can see the want in her look, desire spilling across her features as her gaze darts up and down and all over Coco until settling back on the one thing she can’t see. She reaches behind her and closes the door over, letting the room shift into the quiet light of Coco’s dim bedside lamp washing over the walls and over Velvet’s features. She never once breaks the eye contact she’s maintaining with Coco, and the sureness with which she slowly walks towards her is intoxicating.

Coco licks her dry lips as she feels her own body become light. She feels sweat beading down the back of her neck, down her back, and she’s suddenly more aware of her own body and her own arousal. “I gotta say, confidence really works for you, Velv.”

Again, Velvet’s reply is abrupt. “You want me, right?” she murmurs close, so very close, and it sends a shiver down Coco’s spine. It feels almost right, nodding at the words as she leans closer, but there’s that hesitation, that _almost_ she barely registers in the crackle of her voice or the very faint wobbling of her knees.

But Velvet’s right, and Coco wants her, and that _almost_ slips away from her thoughts as her mind darts back to the allure of Velvet’s lips. Want, that’s all it is. Coco _wants_ her, wants to feel her for once, wants to have Velvet under her like every other girl she’s had under her. Life in Vacuo is so lonely already, so oppressive and coarse, and it’s about time that the soft curves of Velvet’s body and the insistence in her eyes get to her.

“Yeah, I want you,” Coco purrs back, her voice dropping low as her mouth just barely brushes close to Velvet’s. There’s a confidence about Velvet right now as she hardly wavers against being so close to Coco, so close to having their lips meeting, and it’s this that finally makes Coco buckle.

She takes Velvet lips against hers, kissing her with a need that’s been boiling beneath the surface for so long already. Velvet kisses her back at first a little shyly, but very quickly matching that same burning intensity, and it’s more than just a little encouraging. She leans further into the kiss, deeper, her lungs burning with racing breaths as she tilts her head to take Velvet in more fully.

Coco’s hands quickly find their way to Velvet’s hips, holding her in place as they kiss, and she just barely feels the warmth and softness of Velvet’s skin under her hands. Velvet’s breath hitches at the contact and she leans further against Coco, letting Coco guide her forward as the space between them shrinks. Feeling Velvet’s skin under her fingertips is smooth, it’s exciting, and she can’t help but let her mind wander where her hands haven’t yet, longing for the skin under the last layers of clothes she has left.

“Fuck,” she mutters breathlessly, pulling away to catch her shaky breath. Velvet almost immediately follows, falling back into the kiss and prompting a surprised moan from Coco. Velvet’s arms settle around Coco’s shoulders, her hands looping behind her neck as she reaches up on the tips of her toes to be at Coco’s level, all while Coco’s hands rest firmly against her, holding her stable.

The back of her neck grows hot under Velvet’s touch as she runs her fingers along Coco’s spine, her nails just barely grazing her skin, now humid and riddled with goosebumps. She thinks of how much she wants this, how much being able to finally kiss Velvet turns her on. It’s good, not having to hide these feelings she’d been so sure were different for some reason. She’s Coco Adel, she’s done this before.

Coco lets her teeth slip into their kiss, grazing along the kiss-swollen flesh of Velvet’s lip. Velvet seems almost to freeze for a moment, a small yelp escaping her mouth, before she goes back into the kiss, this time parting her lips just enough for her tongue to slip through; the kiss quickly deepens, Coco feeling Velvet’s tongue gliding against hers as she presses further into her hips for stability; she imagines Velvet’s probably just as good with her tongue down there, and it’s easy and exciting to imagine Velvet on her knees with her face buried between her legs.

It’s a thought that makes Coco’s whole body flare with arousal and she moans into the kiss. Velvet curls her arms tighter around her, hanging onto her like she’s desperate to feel as much of Coco’s skin as she can.

Velvet tilts her head up, breaking from the kiss, and looks at Coco with slightly trembling lips. “How do you want me?” she asks in a low, husky voice.

Coco stops, her eyes fluttering open as her face hovers just inches from Velvet; now that’s a question she doesn’t mind thinking about a little more. She barely manages to stifle a ‘ _fuck_ ’ behind her teeth as she scans Velvet from behind tinted lenses.

‘How do you want me?’ It’s enough to make her wet, enough to want to take Velvet’s hand and guide it under her skirt to where she wants her most, wondering how her fingers will feel rubbing against her. Or maybe where she wants her most is under her, her legs wrapped around Coco’s waist as she moans her name into her shoulder as Coco’s fingers slide inside her. 

Her mind chases different thoughts, different images of Velvet seated on her bed with her legs hooked over her shoulders as Coco presses into her thighs with ardent kisses and of Velvet’s mouth against her cunt as Coco’s knuckles turn white against the headboard and her voice turns coarse with grunts and moans. 

And there’s that _almost_ , and it pulls Coco away from these daydreams; she’s allowed to have them, she thinks, and they’re already kissing, so it shouldn’t feel this way when her mind puts her back in those places of suggestion, and yet that _almost_ pulls her further and further out of her own mind to look upon Velvet. Upon the way her lip quivers. Upon the way her eyes dart just a bit too quickly between Coco’s lenses. She feels the weight of Velvet’s arms like an immediate pressure in a confined space, something just needing to get out but not sure of how to do so.

Coco pulls her hand from Velvet’s hip, guiding it up to her back as she traces gentle lines against her spine. “How do you want to be, baby?”

It’s immediate, like stretched elastic snapping apart, the whiplash of Velvet’s response ricocheting against her chest with a quick sting. “Don’t be silly, Coco,” she says, and she says it like it’s theatre, rehearsed for the stage. “I’m here for you.”

 _Almost_ rings sharp in her ears, and Coco’s hand rests in the small of Velvet’s back. “I don’t want to do this if you don’t want to, Velvet.”

“Well, don’t you want to do this?” Velvet looks a little confused, and definitely more than a little insulted. “That’s what you keep looking at me about, isn’t it?”

Coco shakes her head low, and suddenly Velvet’s body seems so much smaller, so much more frail, the stitches of hurt she’s masked for so long resurfacing. “Velv, that’s not it at all.”

Velvet rips away from Coco, and the immediate absence of her body from within her hands feels suddenly harsh, violent, and scary. The shadow of the room shifts to oppression, like walls separating them, pulling them away with nowhere for Coco to follow Velvet. It hurts, and Coco’s sure she knows why.

“So it’s pity, then?” Velvet spits, more scared than angry. “It’s never going to be different with you, will it? You’re never going to stop seeing me as soft, or as pathetic.”

“Velvet, what are you talking about?”

Velvet steps back again, and Coco feels desperate to follow. Her arms cross in front of her stomach, and the familiar image of Velvet’s shyness and insecurities fill her vision. “The way you look at me. I thought maybe you just wanted to get in my pants or something, that’s it. But that was even too optimistic for me, wasn’t it? You just saw a plain girl you needed to protect, or to judge, or to…”

She’s verging on tears now, and Coco feels them, too. Tears she’d left unshed before returning to the corners of her eyes, pressing and desperate to fall from her eyes down her cheeks, seeking the only reprieve she can from how hurt Velvet sounds.

Coco shakes her head, and she lets her tears go free as they mark wet lines down her burning cheeks. “Velv, no…”

“There it is, isn’t it? A nod of pity for the plain girl,” Velvet croaks, and the threat of her leaving with so much hanging between them is so tangible, so dangerously there. “That’s all it ever was, right? And to think I was stupid enough to wonder if it was anything else…”

“It is,” Coco interjects. Another step forward, another step away from _almost_ and towards _definite_. “You don’t know how I feel about you.”

“And how do you feel?”

“I’m not really sure.” It’s a little bit true, and she almost wants to follow it up with a quip to dull how those words might hurt either of them, but she can’t be anything but truthful right now, and the truth is that she’s not really sure but she’s slowly making her way there. “But I’d like to figure it out.”

She takes a cautious step forward, careful not to cause any more damage. Every step feels open for her, the broken air between them being picked up and stitched back together as best as she can manage. Coco’s heart hasn’t known the same hurt, and she wants to make sure that Velvet doesn’t have to feel it with her.

“What’s there to figure out?” Velvet mutters quietly. “I mean, you’re _Coco Adel_. I’m just…I’m just Velvet.”

“Maybe I like ‘just Velvet’.”

Velvet’s shoulders seem to relax a bit, and the white tension in her knuckles begins to fade. She glances up at Coco through messy bangs and swallows. “You mean it?”

Coco stares longingly at her through tinted lenses and figures, maybe for once, she doesn’t need to hide how she feels behind them. She reaches up for her sunglasses and slides them off her face before idly putting them on the bedside table; it’s nerve-wracking, at first, being so immediately vulnerable, so truly _visible_ , but she knows that Velvet needs tear-streaked red eyes more than mystery right now.

She turns back to meet Velvet’s eyes, and Velvet looks at her, finds her gaze, and Coco hopes she understands what it really means when she stares. “I mean it, Velvet.”

Velvet’s cheeks flush pink and Coco’s heart swells with adoration. She reaches with her free hand for Velvet’s cheek, brushing her own fingertips back along the ridge of her cheekbone, down against the hinge of her jaw, and dragging with gentle firmness to her chin, tilting it just slightly. She wants to see all of Velvet, the details of her reddened skin flecked with droplets of water and the few tears that are now drying up, and she wants to see her brown eyes as they still from their earlier panic.

Her gaze settles comfortably into Coco’s, and her expression shifts with a grin, a small giggle, and a quick sniffle. Velvet leans into Coco’s touch as Coco guides her with her hand, bringing her close, close enough to get all the details that drive her hand and her heart and the heat under her skin coming closer to the surface with every inch drawn. Closer, and closer, and when they’re close enough again for Coco to feel the small puffs of air from Velvet’s nose against her upper lip and for Coco to see the small ringlets of hazel circling her eyes, it’s close enough for Coco and she lets her heart race, let’s Velvet’s heart guide her.

It does, and it guides Velvet forward again to take Coco’s lips, and Coco is more than eager to return the kiss. It draws out of her own skin that heat, but this time it feels welcome and unstifled, and she can taste salt on Velvet’s lips that remind her to be careful, to be upfront and vulnerable. It’s not like her, and it’s okay, because she wants to make sure Velvet knows what she means when she says she likes her.

Velvet’s own excitement is quick to build, something that almost takes Coco by surprise when she links her arms behind Coco’s neck and brings her legs around her waist; Coco’s able to catch her quickly enough, but she’s taken in that moment, caught by desire and affection and the softness of Velvet’s lips that she stumbles backwards anyways, falling onto her back against her mattress.

Velvet yelps slightly as they land together, pulling out of the kiss to steady herself (though Coco makes sure to keep her steady, too), and when Coco opens her eyes again she sees a flustered expression crossing Velvet’s features, the two of them still knotted together with Coco’s fingers curling under Velvet’s thighs.

She lets out an amused huff and takes a look beside her, then back to Velvet, and a smirk pulls at her lips. “So you were excited to get to the bed, huh?”

Velvet goes red, and she stifles her own giggle as her eyes dart away; Coco’s immediate instinct is to wonder if maybe Velvet’s not ready for that yet, if maybe she misjudged how far Velvet actually wanted to go. This isn’t like before, when Coco was going through the motions of her regular hookups and Velvet was playing along with wavering confidence. No, now it feels much better, much closer, and Coco doesn’t want to screw that up. Velvet trusts her enough to at least not do that.

Coco slides a bit out from under Velvet, propping herself up on the heels of her palms. “Or we could keep just making out. I’m not complaining either way. It’s up to you.”

Velvet smiles and leans in to give Coco another kiss, this one chaste and calm and more tender than Coco’s ever been used to. “Next time,” she murmurs against her lips, her own still shaking a little bit. “Let’s just...can you just keep kissing me?”

Coco places her hand on Velvet’s cheek, and wipes at the muggy residue of earlier tears shed—whether these are the happy tears or the anxious tears, Coco’s not sure, but she swipes it with the pad of her thumb before resting just under her eye.

She searches, seeing that longing in the deep brown of Velvet’s eyes, and it settles her in the moment, in the knowledge that this is something so new, and so alien to her. It scares her, of course, but Coco’s been scared before, and how can she let that fear keep her from kissing Velvet again and seeing a way out of that dark, tight crevice towards something sweet and precious and more adoring than flings and hookups and hickeys on the neck of a girl she’ll hardly look at the next day.

Coco kisses her again, pouring those thoughts into the way her lips press against Velvet’s, and she’s grateful for the desperate shaking of Velvet’s body held into hers. Whatever she’s feeling, she’s sure it’s nothing short of good, of better. And she can figure out exactly what that is with Velvet, for sure, but for now there’s them against the bed and Velvet against her and their hearts have already been exposed between them. 

For now, she kisses Velvet and lets that be her words.

For now, she kisses Velvet and lets her exposed heart be her undressing.

For now, she kisses Velvet, and she’ll figure herself out next time.


End file.
